A painting, titled "Commemorating those who die on their ways to find freedom," from the collection at the UCI Libraries' Southeast Asian Archive. The archive includes photographs, original artwork and written accounts that reflect the Vietnamese American experience.

A Vietnamese refugee boy munches on a cookie at a relocation center in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. The facility had a child day care center which taught children how to speak English, how to count and to discover "what America is all about." The photograph is dated between 1970 to 1980.

A painting, titled "Vietnamese: My old village, my homeland," from the collection at the UCI Libraries' Southeast Asian Archive.

UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake (left) and Daniel Do-Khanh, president of the Vietnamese American Community Ambassadors, sign a memorandum of understanding in December, 2010. VACA agreed to raise $25,000 to fund an archivist for the UCI Libraries' Southeast Asian Archive. That amount will be matched by the university. So far, the group has raised more than $19,000.

The memories are tucked away, hidden in the minds of the Vietnamese who fled their homeland after the fall of Saigon.

It was a time of chaos: A country torn by a civil war, a generation forced to flee, often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, their education and their hearts.

Daniel Do-Khanh was just 4 in April 1975, when his family took a plane to escape Vietnam. And growing up in Garden Grove and Westminster, Do-Khanh heard only wisps of this history from his parents and others in the Vietnamese American community.

It’s rare, he says, for refugees to open up about how and why they resettled in Orange County.

Still, over the years, he heard enough. He met refugees who left their homeland in overcrowded, makeshift boats, in journeys that were harrowing and life-threatening. He heard about others who weren’t as lucky.

But as painful as those stories are, Do-Khanh believes each one is an important piece of history, a tale that needs to be preserved and retold for future generations, including his own two children.

For the last decade, Do-Khanh, a business and employment attorney, and a 1993 graduate of UC Irvine, has harbored the dream of collecting Vietnamese-American oral histories and making their stories accessible to the public.

He learned early on that he’s not the only one with this goal. Others at UCI, including Linda Vo, a professor of Asian American Studies, feel the same way.

So two years ago, when a group of alumni and community members created UCI’s Vietnamese American Community Ambassadors (VACA), the organization looked for a project in which they could collaborate with their alma mater and give back to their community.

They landed on the idea of adding oral histories to the UCI Libraries’ Southeast Asian Archive. The archive is considered a rarity for its trove of unique paintings, photographs and historical documents that focus on refugees and resettlement efforts.

Initially, the organization launched an ongoing fund-raising drive to hire an archivist, and started working out ways to preserve the histories of those who escaped Vietnam.

Next month, the group will launch the Vietnamese American Oral History Project, a three-year push to document the experiences of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California.

With $350,000 in funding from an anonymous donor, the university has hired a post-doctoral fellow to document the oral histories, make them accessible to the public, and unveil the stories at a public exhibit.

UCI Humanities Dean Vicki Ruiz, whom Do-Khanh says was instrumental in making the project a reality, acknowledged that in these times of austerity such a project would have been unimaginable were it not for the donor.

“I know as a researcher how difficult it is to get oral history funded, and to have a philanthropist who cares about history and who cares about people’s memories and the importance of preserving that history – it’s a gift,” says Ruiz.

Do-Khanh, who is a member of UCI’s Vietnamese American Oral History Project advisory board, says the launch is thrilling, but he also recognizes the challenges ahead.

“For me the concern that grows with each year that passes is that more subjects and more stories are lost,” he says. “Time is really of the essence.”

His hope is for the project to include compelling stories of everyday people. But the other challenge will be convincing refugees to share details that they consider personal.

“Even within my own family there’s not a lot of talk about this,” says Do-Khanh. “…The older generation is not going to easily open up.”

His hope is that through the channels of UCI, the sons and daughters and grandchildren of these refugees will reach out and convince family members to participate. By sharing these stories, the community is sharing a gift as well, says Ruiz.

“They’re contributing to their own history,” says Ruiz. “It’s a tremendous amount of trust, and responsibility on our part, to make sure that their memories are preserved.”

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